Development Diary #2: So. Much. Progress.

Hello and welcome to Metropolisim Development Diary #2. It’s been over a month since I posted the first development diary for the game. A lot has happened in the past six weeks. I have been working at a feverish pace developing new functionality for the game, testing and fixing bugs, and interacting with the awesome community that has started to form around the game.

First and foremost I want to address that our Steam community has grown
exponentially and I want to say “welcome” and “thank you” to everyone
who wishlisted and is following the game in our community. It really is
amazing to get to interact with you all and I’ve answered several really
great questions so far. I’m happy to answer more so keep them coming.

Before I get into a recap of what I’ve been working on for the past
month I want to talk a bit about some of the fundamentals of
Metropolisim. I haven’t been shy about discussing the fact that I am a
huge fan of city building games. I want Metropolisim to be, in as many
good ways as possible, a spiritual successor to all of the great city
games that have come before, most notably Sim City 4. For those of you
who have played and are fans of that game I’m sure this is great to
hear, but I know there are a lot of people who haven’t played it, so I
want to be transparent about what you can expect from Metropolisim.

The number one thing you can expect is to go deeper than ever before in
terms of city simulation and management. I would argue that Sim City 4
has taken us, the city building gamer community, about as deep as any
game has. But even that wasn’t nearly enough for me. What it did do was
encourage me to make the game I and others desperately want to play. To
put it in perspective, that game did about 30% of what I want to do and
plan to do. I want to give the player so many “levers to pull” to manage
their city and be an active decision-making participant that it is
almost overwhelming. Almost. This game is going to take time to learn,
it’s going to be challenging, but most importantly it’s going to be fun
and rewarding.

I want to re-capture the feeling we all got when we played our first
city builder and started to see our city make the transition from small
town to metropolis. I want you to feel like what you’re doing matters,
and you’re not just a bystander who painted a couple zone colors on a
map and then watched buildings appear. That is my goal.

Before we can get to all that I need to expand on some of the basic
concepts of the game. I need to outline some of the core gameplay
elements in Metropolisim. I plan to do this over the course of the next
several development diaries, and today I will focus on Road Placement
and Zone Types. Please keep in mind, as Metropolisim is in pre-alpha
stage, the below is subject to change and will most likely improve/grow
in the coming months. But this is what I’ve got working or planned so
far.

Road Placement
In a city building game, my opinion is roads are the backbone of the
gameplay in that many different systems within the game are dependent on
them. Things like knowing which way buildings should face when they
grow or are built, pathfinding, and so on. From a development
perspective I believe it is important to tackle the core of the road
system as the first thing or one the very first things that gets done.
I’m happy to report that is the case with Metropolisim. The roads and
pathfinding are 90% programmed. I will still be adding new road types
(think two lane avenues vs. three lane avenues) but the mechanics of the
roads are done.

As you can see there will be lots of different options from not only a
gameplay perspective, but also in how you lay out your city from a
design regard, and to make it have a nice appearance.I am really excited
about this!

Zone Types
Zoning in a city builder is another critical element that is fundamental
and essential to good gameplay. I am deeply focused on incorporating a
lot of variety in the zone types to keep things fun and challenging for
you, the player. I believe in giving the player as many options as
possible and letting you decide how they want to use it all. In other
city builders there are only 1-4 zone types to choose from, but in
Metropolisim there will be over 15.

Here is a list of currently planned zone types:

Residential – Low Density
Residential – Medium Density
Residential – High Density
Commercial Office – Low Density
Commercial Office – High Density
Commercial Service
Mixed Use – Residential/Commercial
Industrial – Factory
Industrial – Manufacturing
Industrial – Technology
Special & Reward – I will be dedicating an entire future development
diary to this, as it is something really unique, special and exciting
that I want to make sure I give a lot of information on

As you can see there will be countless options in terms of how you zone
the land in your city and how you balance the needs of your citizens
against the fundamental financial well-being of your city. Metropolisim,
of course, will feature things like a demand level and an approval
level. You’ll need to be very careful about how and where you zone
certain zone types to ensure they meet the needs of your city.

Things like not placing high-polluters next to residential is a given,
but also you’ll need to make sure that jobs are not too far away from
citizen’s homes or public transportation stops if you want to make sure
your citizens are employed and stay employed. Lots more to talk about
related to this. Stay tuned.

In the next development diary I’ll talk about more of the core
city-builder elements featured in Metropolisim. But for now I’d like to
move on to some of the other things I’ve been working on in the past
month.

User Interface

The UI is coming along nicely. Up until about two weeks ago I was
working with a “development only” UI that was definitely not easy on the
eyes. I have started transitioning to moving a lot of the UI
functionality that is already programmed over to a pre-alpha version
which gets it laid out on the screen where I want and is starting to use
some nicer looking placeholder graphical elements. The main focus for
me with UI design is to make it as easy as possible for the player to
navigate and get to the information they need as easily as possible so
they can make decisions about their city and execute on them quickly.

Map
I spent a lot of time in the past 10 days working on ensuring the maps
are large enough to hold cities that have millions of citizens. My
initial test maps were 400×400 tiles which is 160,000 in-game tiles to
build on. This is larger than an entire Sim City 4 region, but still not
large enough for me. I reprogrammed some of the map tools and I am
currently experimenting with maps 1600×1600 which comes out to 2,560,000
in-game tiles. This is HUGE in comparison to other games. So far it has
not had a negative impact on game performance, but I will continue to
monitor and adjust as needed. The player will be able to choose the map
size they play on, but it’s too early to lock-down the maximum final
size. Bottom line, the game is going to be huge, the cities are going to
be huge. Even the smallest map I’ve been working with is larger than an
entire Sim City 4 region!

Mod Support
I’ve had lot of questions about Mod support in Metropolisim so I want to
take an opportunity to address them all now. As I discussed in the last
development diary there absolutely are plans to support Mods through
the Steam Workshop. Among the modding possibilities planned as of today
are the ability to bring new buildings into the game, as well as new
maps. The addition of new buildings will be supported by a separate
stand-alone application that will ship with the game giving modders the
ability to define certain things about the building prior to uploading
to the Steam Workshop, or for players to do if they create their own
buildings. An example of some of the building characteristics that need
to be set include type of building (residential, commercial, etc.),
maximum occupancy (residential), job capacity (commercial), etc. I
envision the Steam Workshop thriving with new buildings that can be
brought into the game similar to Cities Skylines workshop.

More
to come on this. I am working towards the goal of having mod tools ready
for Early Access release, but unfortunately I can’t guarantee
everything will be ready in time. I am fully committed to adding a
significant amount of new functionality, mod support, and gameplay
elements as we move through Early Access and beyond.

That’s all I’ve got for this month’s update. Thank you again to everyone
who has wishlisted the game and is participating in our Steam
community. If you haven’t done either of those things I encourage you
to. I look forward to sharing lots more about Metropolisim with you in
the coming months.